Grandmother's Flower Garden

 Hi all!  

Today I'm excited to share a piece that has been in the works for a long time.  I've always wanted to try making a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. I love vintage and 1930's fabrics so it seemed like a perfect choice for me. 

Well I stopped at a wall hanging, and that took me a year (on and off).  It was great fun but a ton of work! Now I have the perfect wall hanging for my office!

I started making the hexagons last summer while sitting outside at the lake.  It was a great project to just carry around.  For the flowers I tried to use all scrapes from 1930's reproduction fabrics collection.  Then it was on to putting the hexagons together.  Again, fun, and easy to carry around but, time consuming. 

Since I seem to need to embellish everything here is were things started to get really fun.  I started by adding some embroidered flower buds on three petals of each flower.  Next, buttonhole stitches were added around each flower.

Then came the details on each white hexagons, 3 buttons and a spray of pink French knots. I also added green embroidery on the seams of all the green hexagons.

Putting the top with a backing I found to be the hardest part of this piece.

I wanted the piece to have straight edges so I started by making four white borders.

The borders were constructed by first cutting white stripe the length of each side then adding short white strip across those strips and weaving white eyelet through them. The strips are hand stitched to the back of the hexagon flower piece. The piece could then be layered with a thin middle (I used a single piece of cotton) and a backing (I used flannel for the backing)

                                     

Finally,  I wanted a pop in each flower center so I added a clear button.  Most of the buttons are vintage and they are in a variety of styles. The buttons are all tied on the quilt top with yellow floss. The yellow ties go through the button and all 3 layers. This makes the yellow ties what hold the quilt layers together.

Binding was added using the same white fabric as borders.

Finished size is 22 . 5" X 22 .5".

Hope your day is wonderful!